That’s what I’ve been doing lately instead of writing more articles here at Parallel Divergence. So I thought I’d share with you my latest hobby project. It’s called Stu’s Double Jeopardy! version 3.1 – and as usual, it’s completely free for anyone who wants it.

NOT LONG after Kevin Rudd’s Labor Party was whisked into power in Australia after 12 years of conservative government, there were immediate and obvious differences that appeared. Rudd took no traditional “honeymoon” period, instead preferring to get straight to work on delivering his pre-election promises. One of these being the $1.2 billion “Digital Education Revolution“.

If you’re still listening, I’ll assume you’re still interested in creating a class blog at your school. In part one, we concentrated on WHY teachers and schools should be blogging. In part two, we looked at WHAT had to be done to ensure student privacy and security. Now, in this third instalment of the class blogging series, we’ll look more closely at the HOW TO get started process.

In the article “Why Teachers and Schools Should be Blogging“, I discussed the reasons and benefits of blogging in the classroom, but for the blogging-novice, there are student privacy, security and policy concerns that must be considered. Assuming you took notice of the content of that first article, this one will take you through the first steps of creating a class blog and is part of a series that will clarify and develop this process for teachers and schools starting out.

MANY of our students leave school in the afternoon and go straight on-line as soon as they get home. They immediately start chatting with their friends on MSN, often holding down multiple conversations at the same time, seamlessly changing subjects and maintaining discussion threads as they swap from one chat window to the next. Their typing speed continually improves and in just one on-line session, they might type more text than they handwrite during their lessons at school in a whole day.

The unexpected demise of famous young people due to “accidental” drug overdoses has dotted modern history. Janis Joplin, John Belushi, River Phoenix, Kurt Cobain, and Heath Ledger all succumbed to an addiction that snatched away their lives when they were in their prime. While crystal-meth, crack and ecstasy are now the most “popular” of illicit drugs, Heroin still remains the pinnacle.

In February 2007, the first of almost 2,500 “$150 Laptops” will be rolled out to school children in the poorest areas of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Nigeria, Libya, Rwanda and Cambodia. The ambitious “One Laptop Per Child” (OLPC) project was first devised in January 2005 with the concept of producing an affordable laptop computer specifically for the poorest and most-remote children in the world. Just two years and several prototypes later, the impressive lime-green and white “Children’s Machine” dubbed the XO is almost ready for mass-production.

When people run a project, an essential part of the success of that project is ongoing review. What did we do right? What did we do wrong? What could we have done better? Those evaluations and recommendations then must be applied to future projects to ensure progress. Why as a society would we not apply that same concept to our children? While it is our job to teach children, we must also listen to them and learn from them.

December 12, 2006: GOOGLE releases an add-on to Google Earth in an attempt to reverse the damage it has done to millions of children around the world. But instead of reigniting children’s belief in Santa, it has effectively provided a fatal blow that will resonate in the ears and minds of our now scarred youth.

None of us will live forever. The record advancements of the 20th Century were made on the back of strong education systems aimed directly at providing our children with the analytical and problem-solving skills that each generation needed to continue the progress that humanity was demanding. But now it appears that mankind has well and truly peaked and downhill is the only way to head.